A local area network (LAN) generally includes a router and a set of user devices. The router manages access of the user devices to online resources (e.g., web sites) by assigning local internet protocol (IP) addresses to the user devices and by translating between these local IP addresses and the router's own IP address. For example, a user device requests and receives content from a web site via the router. In particular, the router replaces the user device's local IP address in the request with the router's IP address, and sends the request to a web server hosting the web site. Upon a response including the content from the web server, the router replaces the router's IP address with the user device's local address in the response and sends this response to the user device.
Back-end systems can collect traffic data, which includes IP addresses of routers that connect user devices to the Internet, and customize web content based on analyzing this traffic data. Because a router connects different user devices to a website via the Internet, data traffic to the web site shows the IP address of the router, rather than the local IP address of the user device on the LAN. Specifically, the web server receives a request for web content from the IP address of the router and directs a response to the IP address of the router, regardless of which user on the LAN submitted the request. Thus, when back-end systems customize content based on an IP address in web traffic, the back-end systems provide customized content specific to a router's IP address, thereby causing a common online experience to be provided for the user devices on a LAN that includes the router. For instance, when a tablet and a desktop computer of the LAN are operated to access the web site, consistent targeted content can be provided to both the tablet and the desktop computer. However, traditional systems, which rely on customizing content based on an IP address of a LAN's router, present certain disadvantages.
One example of these disadvantages is that traditional back-end systems, which focus on router IP addresses when customizing content, could mistakenly attribute different online activities to a single LAN even though these activities were actually performed via two different LANs. This inaccurate “single network attribution” typically occurs in a computing environment that uses a dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP). For instance, a first user device on a first LAN accesses online resources via a first router. According to the DHCP protocol, an Internet service provider (ISP) dynamically assigns and changes the IP address of the first router. Often, the IP address currently assigned to the first router may have been previously assigned to a second router providing online access to a second user device on a second LAN. Therefore, the online activities of the two devices belonging to two different LANs would show that the same IP address was used over time. Traditional back-end systems would inaccurately attribute the online activities to devices on the same network because of the same IP address being used by the two different routers. Thus, instead of content on the first router's LAN being customized differently than content on the second router's LAN, the same type of content-customization would mistakenly occur for the user devices across both LANs.
Another example of these disadvantages is that traditional back-end systems also mistakenly attribute certain online activities to a LAN, even though these activities were actually performed by a user device that does not typically use that LAN. This inaccurate “device attribution” typically occurs when a user device travels between locations corresponding to different LANs. For instance, the LAN may correspond to a first user's household and the first user may set this LAN as his or her home network. When a second user visits the household for a short period of time and connects his or her own user device, the resulting online activities of this “visiting” user device also show the IP address of the LAN's router. Thus, if a back-end system customizes web content based on data traffic from that router's IP address, activities of the visiting user device would be mistakenly included in an analysis of “home network” activities, even though the visiting user device was only briefly connected to the LAN. For instance, the back-end system would mistakenly customize content for both the first user, who regularly uses the home network, and the second user, who rarely uses the home network, instead of customizing content to only the first user.